When President Biden set forth his American Rescue Plan, it became clear that Democrats had much bigger ambitions than a mere coronavirus relief package. Such a package, done right, would carefully and narrowly target those suffering due to the pandemic and deliver them aid as quickly as possible.
Biden’s plan does neither of these things.
In particular, its education component is what people on Capitol Hill call a “Christmas tree.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirms, with its breakdown of the Democratic package, that the bill on the table is an unfocused expenditure hijacked by all manner of non-COVID-19 items. It is a vehicle to accommodate Democrats’ long-running spending urges. It is designed to satisfy the greedy desires of the very teachers unions that have been preventing children from getting the education they need and deserve and to do it in a must-pass bill that cynically circumvents the regular appropriations process.
Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly claimed that schools cannot reopen without an immediate fiscal shot to the arm in order to ensure student and teacher safety. This is not an unreasonable ask, and indeed, at first glance, the bill appears to deliver a huge dose of help. It would appropriate $128.6 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which Biden’s rescue plan demands in order “to support schools in safely reopening.”
However, there is a catch. The bill would spend only $6.4 billion of that money in fiscal 2021 — less than 5% of the total.
There are eight months left until fiscal 2021 ends on Sept. 30. The period between now and then is the critical one. This is when schools must make whatever renovations or expensive changes are needed so that schools can reopen — for the current school year, or even for the next one. It is also during this period that the pandemic will be worse than at any time afterward, assuming that vaccinations are even slightly effective.
It is evident that 95% of the money being programmed for “reopening” is not going to be used for that purpose unless Biden doesn’t intend for schools to reopen until November or even next January.
And the vast majority of the money still won’t be spent for another year after that. The “reopening” money in this bill is so heavily backloaded that $90 billion of it, nearly three-fourths, will, in fact, be spent between fiscal years 2023 and 2028. So either Biden is lying about the urgent need and is just using the taxpayer to pay a ransom to the teachers unions that are holding children’s education hostage, or he thinks the pandemic will have gone on for eight years.
Biden and the Democrats never hid from the public what they wanted to do with regard to schools and COVID-19 relief. When he pitched his rescue plan, Biden outlined several priorities that had absolutely nothing to do with the very school safety measures — such as smaller class sizes, enhanced ventilation, and increased transportation capacity — that Democrats and teachers union bosses had been insisting were necessary in order to reopen schools.
It turns out that those demands were really just a dilatory tactic, to keep schools closed as long as possible so that union members don’t have to go back to work. Shame on the teachers unions, and shame on their puppet, Joe Biden.
